A few weeks ago, I decided to locate some
notable people in the 1930 census using the Ancestry.com indexes and
images. For some, location was as easy as typing their name in the
search box. For others, more creative searching techniques were
necessary. Some, for the time being, defied location.

We've discussed the 1930 census before, but this time the method was
slightly different, particularly because I was starting from scratch in
most cases. (I've included links to previous 1930 census-searching
articles at the end of this column.) Census entries for some of the
notable people I could locate in 1930 are linked to at www.rootdig.com/1930census/.

Spending a few days locating people I knew little about was quite a
learning experience and provided challenges I did not face when
searching for my own family. This week, we'll discuss some of the
additional lessons I learned while searching for some of America's most
notable names in 1930. In general, the more obscure the individual was
in 1930 the more difficult they were to locate—but not always.

While this week we concentrate on using Ancestry.com's online full name
index to the 1930 census, the lessons discussed are relevant to manual
searches of the census as well. When the online index fails to locate
someone (and sooner or later it will), a manual search of the census
images will be necessary. And those who have access to Ancestry.com's
census images can search the census manually at their own convenience.

Now for some of the challenges I faced when locating the rich and
famous—and sometimes the not so rich and famous—in 1930.

What Were Their Names?
I had a problem with many entertainers that I do not have with my own
relatives: stage names. Most entertainers were not enumerated under
their stage names and locating the actual name was occasionally a
problem. While most researchers do not have to deal with stage names,
name variants frequently present a problem, as does surname
anglicization. To locate many 1930 notables I had to obtain as many
first and middle names for them as possible and then systematically
search for each name. You may have to do the same thing for your family
member who has multiple names. Wildcard searches (entering the first
three letters of a name followed by an asterisk) were occasionally
helpful.

They Moved around Too Much
The less stable the family environment, the more likely the family was
to move around and the more difficult they tended to be to locate. Some
notables came from families that were stable in the sense that the
father had a steady job and there was nearby family support. These
families were generally easier to locate. Families who were poor or
dysfunctional were more difficult to locate in the census, especially
if the children were separated from the parents. These were cases where
learning as much as possible about the family and the background were
helpful, but even that was no guarantee the family would be located.
Being able to at least enter in a state or a county as one of the
search terms made some searches easier.

Who Were Their Parents in 1930?
This question is not as odd as it sounds. Some notables were difficult
or impossible to locate, as I was unable to sort out their parents'
marital status as of 1930 (and sometimes I don't think the parents had
their marital situations figured out themselves!). One of the more
difficult situations was when the desired person lived with a mother
who had had several husbands. Custodial fathers who went through a
string of wives were not as problematic, because the surnames of the
children could not potentially change with each marriage. With mothers
having multiple husbands the surname of at least the mother would
change. Children enumerated with the surname of the stepfather were an
additional problem, whether the child ever "really" used the
stepfather's surname or not. And of course, if there was just one
husband whose name was not known, he would always be the husband with
whom the mother was living in 1930.

Who Was Their Spouse in 1930?
For those female notables of marriage age in 1930, sometimes the
problem was determining who their husband was in 1930. This difficulty
was aggravated as there were some notables I could not locate who I
suspect had a husband in 1930 that they kept hidden in their past.
Who Were Other Family Members?
Searching for the entire family is always a good genealogical technique
and since Ancestry.com has an every-name index, it worked here several
times as well. Occasionally searching for the siblings of the desired
person was more effective than searching for the actual
person—especially if a sibling had an unusual first name. There were
also times when finding all the "right people" in the same household
helped me determine that I had the correct family.
Their Occupations Helped
Many of the notables had listed occupations that were atypical for the
area in which they were living or for the time period. This made it
easier to determine if I had the correct individual. When I located a
Maybelle Carter in Virginia listed as a musician, I was pretty certain
I had the right family in my attempt to locate her daughter June Carter
Cash—even though June was not enumerated with that name in the census.
After all, in 1930 not every wife had an occupation enumerated and
those that did were rarely listed as musicians (especially in rural
Virginia).

Their Occupations Did Not Help
I did not always know what occupation the person would have had in 1930
and sometimes this caused confusion when I thought I had located the
person. For instance, Gene Autry is enumerated in 1930 as a telegraph
operator—not what I expected. This had me confused until I located
several biographical references indicating he had worked as a
telegrapher before his other career took off.
It Gets Repeated and Repeated
In order to learn something about the backgrounds of the people I was
trying to locate, I used search engines to locate biographical pages.
Finding the official page of the person was always an excellent idea,
but these "official" online biographies did not always contain the
necessary details to actually locate the person in the census. Fans
created many of these sites, and unfortunately many of the sites
contained the same biographical text. The idea here is to locate a site
maintained by a diehard fan—one concerned with getting as many accurate
details as possible. This is much like trying to locate that elusive
GEDCOM file created by a genealogist obsessed with accurate details.
Unfortunately, for some of the notables I was not always able to locate
such sites. When I saw the same typographical error over and over, I
knew the biography had been simply copied and pasted from one website
to another.

What County Is That In?
Genealogists obsess on the county where a village or town is located.
Biographers do not. Consequently I used the United States Geological
Survey's Geographic Names Information System site to determine the
county in which a town or village was located. Using the county in the
search box was helpful in several cases.

Make a Chronology
Some of the more useful "fan sites" that I used were ones that
contained a chronology of the person's life. Chronologies made it
easier to pinpoint where the person would have been living in 1930 and
who their spouse should have been on the date of the census. Census
work is just one instance where chronologies are helpful to family
historians.

Locating the notables in 1930 taught me quite a bit about searching the
census. It also provided a glimpse into the lives of some of America's
notables. It became clear that while some were living lives of
privilege in 1930, some clearly were not. This just goes to show that a
lot can change in seventy-three years.

Michael John Neill, is the
Course I Coordinator at the Genealogical Institute of Mid America
(GIMA) held annually in Springfield, Illinois, and is also on the
faculty of Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Illinois. Michael is the
Web columnist for the FGS FORUM and is on the editorial board of the Illinois
State Genealogical Society Quarterly. He conducts seminars and
lectures on a wide variety of genealogical and computer topics and
contributes to several genealogical publications, including Ancestry
Magazine and Genealogical Computing. You can email him at: mjnrootdig@myfamily.com or
visit his website at: www.rootdig.com/,
but he regrets that he is unable to assist with personal research.
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